The Roads Not Taken
by Linndechir
Summary: Mostly, Davos approves of Stannis' rigid principles but, sometimes, just sometimes, he wishes Stannis would waver.  set ten years before GoT, so no worries about spoilers


Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, I'm just playing with the possibilities.

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><p><strong>The Roads Not Taken<strong>

Stannis Baratheon had never been a talkative man, never one for easy courtesies and polite conversation. He said what he had to say, bluntly and honestly, but when he was done, he kept quiet. He didn't talk for the sake of talking, but Davos never minded the silence between them. There was something comfortable, almost intimate about these evenings they spent together. They would often share dinner, talking about the council meetings that day, but as the evening grew longer and darker, the words became fewer, and they often spent hours just sitting together, sometimes over a glass of wine that Stannis so rarely indulged in, but more often not.

Davos missed his wife and his sons, whom he had left back in his keep at Cape Wrath, and he would ask his lord for leave to visit them soon, but in moments like these there was no place he'd rather be than sitting next to Stannis in his lord's spacious, but simple chambers in King's Landing.

Stannis was staring into his empty glass, lost in thoughts, but Davos' presence did not seem to bother him. Davos took the opportunity to study his lord, the features he knew so well. Life had not been kind to Stannis, he looked older than his twenty-five years, older than his brother Robert. He had always been solemn and serious, even back when Davos had first met him during the siege, when Stannis had been barely more than a boy. Back then his face had been gaunt from hunger and exhaustion, but now it was deeply lined with bitterness and worries, too deeply for a man his age. When Davos had not known him well yet, he had expected that the end of the war would bring smiles to Stannis' face, light into his eyes. But peace had, if anything, been more cruel to him than war: Robert's ingratitude was a constant source of humiliation, and his beloved little brother was growing up into a stranger, too much like Robert for Stannis to love.

A blind man could see how much Stannis hated King's Landing, the court, the council, the schemers and flatterers, and Davos could not help but admire the determination with which Stannis ignored his own wishes and stayed to do his duty to a king who barely acknowledged, let alone thanked him.

He was lonely, Davos knew. How could he not be? His marriage had been a loveless chore from the beginning, and indifference had grown into resentment when Selyse had only given him a sickly daughter, the birth of whom had apparently left her barren. When another year's listless, but dutiful attempts at another child had remained in vain, Stannis had sent both mother and daughter back to Dragonstone. Any other man would have simply taken a mistress, fathered a bastard son on some fertile young girl and asked his royal brother to legitimise the boy as his heir. But not Stannis, who was all iron will and unbroken principles, who stayed faithful to his unloved wife with the same stubborn sense of duty with which he served an ungrateful king, knowing that neither brother nor wife would ever love or reward him.

Back when Davos had accepted Stannis' judgement, he had done it for the knighthood and the lands. Now, looking down at his shortened fingeres and back up at this unrelenting man who had given him a new life, Davos knew that Stannis was as hard on himself as he was on others. That was the true reason Davos never questioned the justice of his lord's decision, not even when his maimed fingers ached during cold, wet autumn nights.

Suddenly he felt Stannis looking at him, that piercing gaze out of eyes as deep and blue and intense as the sea. He didn't wince or pull back when Stannis moved to take Davos' maimed hand in his own. The touch was not gentle, but it was careful. Rough fingertips brushed over the stumps, the bit of splintered bone at the end of his index – the first strike had been less unerring than the following, Stannis had missed the joint by a hair's breadth. The stumps were sensitive, but Stannis had touched them so often that he knew exactly how careful he had to be not to hurt him.

Davos suppressed a sigh when Stannis' fingers curled slightly around his. He had noticed a long time ago that Stannis' hands were a lot like his lord himself: rough, hard, calloused, scarred, but so strong, so firm, yet never cruel. These hands had wielded the butcher's cleaver that had taken away his past, and they had wielded the sword that gave him his future. Davos savoured every time that Stannis touched his fingers, his wrist sometimes, or his shoulder. Stannis was uneasy about physical contact, he tensed up whenever someone touched him, and while he never stepped too close to Davos, he seemed to feel the occasional need to touch him, his hands somewhat awkward and unsteady when they clutched Davos' shoulder in the closest thing that Stannis ever came to an embrace.

More than once Davos had found himself thinking of those hard, but just hands during lonely nights, or even in moments like these, when Stannis was so close, when his eyes found Davos', piercing, searching. Once Davos had been terrified that Stannis would see right through him, see the dirty thoughts of the low-born smuggler who would willingly give himself to his lord in any way he desired.

But that had been before Davos realised that Stannis _knew_, that the crack in the dark ice of his eyes was not anger, but longing. Not for Davos' body, no, Stannis seemed to be above any mere physical desires, and Davos had no illusions about his common looks. But there was longing for the one thing Davos could give him, wanted to give him: the love that Stannis deserved more than any other man in the realm, the love that Robert denied him, that his wife denied him, that even little Renly had come to deny him. But Davos loved his lord enough to make up for all of them, and in moments like these, when Stannis' fingers tightened a little around his, when Stannis leant in a bit closer, unconsciously, until his breath brushed Davos' forehead – in moments like these Davos knew that Stannis wanted, needed him so much that denying himself seemed to break him. His jaw was clenched, the muscles in his neck stood out like cords that were about to snap. Their faces were so close that Davos could smell the scent of lemon in Stannis' forcedly slow breath. A vein stood out on his temple, blood rushing through it: his heart must have been racing.

"Davos." His voice was hoarse, rough, quivering with the strain of keeping it calm. There was a quiet desperation in it, a question that remained unspoken because Stannis did not expect an answer.

"My lord?" Davos did not smile, merely lifted his head, eyes meeting Stannis', their lips so close that an inch would be all it would take. It would be so easy to lean forward a bit further and bring his lips to Stannis', loosening that pained scowl, easing away the tension, showing him that no matter what happened, no matter who abandoned or disappointed him, Davos was his, would always be his.

But Davos was only Stannis' Onion Knight, devoted and obedient. He would accept anything Stannis deigned to give him, but he would never presume to ask for more, not even knowing that Stannis would not betray his principles himself, that he would rather deny himself happiness and pleasure even when all he had to do was to close that small distance between them and take what was his.

Because he wouldn't have been Stannis if he had done that, and so the moment passed as all these other moments between them had passed before. Blue eyes looked away, strong hands let go of the fingers they had once maimed. Stannis stood abruptly and turned his back to Davos, as if it wasn't too late already, as if Davos hadn't already seen the calm surface of Stannis' eyes stir, revealing the turmoil underneath. He watched as his lord went over to the window, staring out into the summer night, one hand clutching the window frame as he tried to compose himself.

They had been here before, so close to what they wanted, what they needed, but Stannis always retreated before he could falter. Davos knew that when his lord would turn around again, no sign of agitation would show on his face, no word would be said of this unspeakable thing that sometimes threatened to blossom between them, but was always smothered by cold principle.

Davos admired Stannis, loved him for his strength and his unwavering sense of right and wrong, no matter the cost or the pain to himself. Yet he couldn't help but think that if Stannis did not falter one day, he would break inside, but he knew just as well that if Stannis ever gave in, the guilt would break him just as much. But sometimes, just sometimes, he wished that Stannis could set his principles aside for one night, that he would allow himself a single moment of weakness, for both their sakes.


End file.
